CWT’S TOP TIP

In a year of reduced travel budgets, business travellers can still fulfil their travel obligations and achieve overall business goals. Here’s how to maximise travel budgets:

• Get familiar with your company’s travel policy; these are generally written not only to maximise your company’s travel dollar, but also with traveller safety and security in mind.

• Make all reservations with your company’s preferred travel management company. Not only will this ensure compliance to company travel policy, it means all travel-related data is captured and can be used to negotiate better rates with vendors, but also to facilitate traveller tracking in the case of an incident or emergency.

• Know your company’s preferred airline, hotel and car suppliers, and always select these. In addition to the benefits of accessing your company’s negotiated rates for your travel, the consolidated expenditure with preferred vendors provides greater leverage for your company at renegotiation time. Some companies allow travellers to use non-preferred suppliers if the price is lower than preferred, however you must check your policy for this information.

• Plan your travel as far in advance as possible to ensure availability of your company’s negotiated airfares or to use advance purchase airfares, and for better availability of your company’s preferred hotel room rates or specials.

• Consider economy class (or premium economy, if available) travel rather than business class if your company’s travel policy permits.

• Use the online booking tool if your company has implemented one. This will generally reduce your company’s transaction fees as well as ensuring policy compliance, while coming under the control of your company’s preferred travel management company.

• Plan meetings around the lowest fares and don’t plan flights around meeting times if you can avoid it. Being flexible with flight times will open up more opportunities to access lower fares.

• Look at restricted fares or connecting flight where practical to maximise savings. Always read the terms and conditions carefully.

• Before collecting rental cars, check your company travel policy with regards to insurance excesses (usually paid at the counter), as these may already be included in the negotiated rate or covered by alternative insurance policies.

• Always use your company’s preferred credit card to make payments.

• If you are a meetings and events (M&E) manager, look at consolidating M&E with transient travel volumes for better leverage with suppliers.

TRAVEL TRENDS

Michael Mannix, CWT’s Global Head – Air Solutions Group & Vice President Solutions Group, Asia Pacific, summarises recent travel market trends, and gives an outlook for 2009

To understand how 2009 will play out in terms of travel market trends, it is important to first look back at 2008.

In the global aviation sector, 2008 was a year of two halves – the bad half and the worse half. In the space of 15 months, industry-wide profits fell from an October 2007 forecast of US$9.6billion profit, to an aggregate loss of US$5billion.

The performance was underpinned by a volatile (and all-time-high) fuel price and rapidly diminishing passenger numbers in the second half of the year – due to the accelerated deterioration of the global economy.

For hotels, 2008 saw a general cooling off rather than a collapse, with weighted annual occupancy rates and average rates remaining relatively high. However, average occupancy levels and rates fell away in Quarter 4, and in so doing, set the tone for 2009.

Due to the effects of fuel costs (now a problem of over-hedging) and weak demand, we expect to see published airfares only increase by between 2% and 4% in 2009. However, we anticipate average ticket prices paid will reduce by between 2% and 7% – depending on the market – due to the fact that the carriers will continue to suffer from over-capacity and will therefore use tactical low-cost airfares in the market to attract customers.

For hotels, we will continue to see weakening demand, with average negotiated rate trends ranging between plus and minus 2%. We expect booked rates to decrease by between 2% and 5% as hotels deploy tactical low-cost rate offerings as well.

SECURITY DATA

Secure Flight Final Rule will require collection of additional airline passenger data — for travel to the US

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the issuance of the Secure Flight Final Rule on October 22, 2008. While the effective date for the rule was December 29, 2008, the additional airline passenger data elements will not be required by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) until official implementation later in 2009. The travel industry is proposing to provide the data necessary for phase one by May
1. Phase two is currently scheduled for implementation in “late 2009”. Secure Flight is considered to be the next evolution of ongoing government efforts to address a passenger pre-screening process for air travellers.

The Secure Flight programme will transfer the responsibility for comparing domestic pre-departure passenger lists to federal government watch lists from the airlines to TSA. According to the TSA, under their supervision, the programme “will require airlines to collect a passenger’s full name, date of birth, and gender when making an airline reservation”.

This information will be required for each passenger, as well as for certain non-travelling individuals, such as those escorting a minor or disabled passenger to a gate. The information will be used to identify known or suspected terrorists, individuals on the No Fly List, and/or individuals selected for enhanced screening.

CWT Travellers

CWT is currently evaluating process requirements to fully prepare for the additional information required under this programme and to enable traveller compliance via our profile tool, CWT Portrait. In cooperation with the airlines, Global Distribution Systems (GDSs), and the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA), CWT is working to standardise the collection of these new data elements, and will share additional detail as soon as the new processes are finalised. The goal is to automate the process of populating this data in the reservation as much as possible for both new reservations as well as any exchanges on tickets issued prior to the effective date. In addition, travellers should populate the date of birth and gender data elements in CWT Portrait, which will also be required.

In the interim, CWT recommends travellers ensure their full name, including any middle name, is listed in their traveller profile, in CWT Portrait, and that it exactly matches the full name indicated on any government-issued ID, passport or driver’s license they use at the airport. In addition, travellers should populate the date of birth and gender data elements in CWT Portrait.

Travel Managers are encouraged to communicate these recommendations to all travellers. As the new version of CWT Portrait is now available, we suggest this is a great opportunity to promote the new-look interface and inform travellers that these data elements will be necessary for travel to the US in the near future, and to recommend to all travellers that they update the necessary data elements.

Additionally, travellers should confirm the name on their frequent-flyer account matches the name on their identification and ticket. The process for making a change to frequent-flyer accounts varies by airline. CWT recommends contacting the airline to make any necessary name changes. Please note: The Secure Flight programme is separate and additional to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) – which addresses changes in security procedures for travellers from countries participating in the US Visa Waiver Program (VWP) attempting to enter the United States. As part of legislation recently passed to enhance US border security, travellers with passports from VWP countries are required to apply for ESTA authorisation via the ESTA website prior to travel to the US (https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/esta.html).

APPOINTMENTS

CWT promotes Paul Boyle to General Manager for Hong Kong

Paul Boyle now reports to Martin Warner, Chief Operating Officer, Asia Pacific, and has relocated to Hong Kong from London, where he was CWT Director of Programme Management for the United Kingdom.

Boyle has worked in the travel industry for more than 20 years and joined CWT UK in 1993. He has served in various operational and leadership roles with CWT, including Director of Traveller and Transaction Services for Northern Europe, the position he held before assuming his current responsibilities in 2007. In his new position, he is in charge of managing the operations, ensuring the highest levels of client satisfaction and expanding the client base for CWT Hong Kong.